Tuesday, February 28, 2006

More bloggers join the Kansas Project

when I was discussing it with a co-worker, he just looked at me and said, “Who cares? They can listen to my calls all they want.”

This attitude is somewhat understandable; after all, why should I worry about the NSA “accidentally” listening in on my monthly football-talk phone call to my fraternity brother? And it’s not like this blog is on some government watch list — hell, I can’t even make O’Reilly’s list.

It matters because there have already been abuses of other surveillance programs, which were supposed to target terrorists but for some reason also listed peace protesters and Greenpeace. Kinda destroys that whole “we only target terrorists” argument simply because that’s damn near impossible to do.

It matters because there is already a process to obtain a warrant that ensures a check on executive-branch powers. (And if that’s not good enough, then why did the Bush administration squash a proposal to loosen any restrictions currently in the FISA statute?)

It matters because the party affiliation of who’s doing the spying doesn’t matter, as the outcry about his issue has been bi-partisan.

It matters because history has proven that giving one man and his inner circle the kind of powers this administration has taken is simply too much.

It matters because this could eventually affect each and every one of us.